What a queer neighborhood is that in the immediate vicinity of the
_Place d’Armes_, in the First Municipality! A stranger can scarce
realize that he is in an American city, so foreign an air pervades the
vicinage. There one beholds the time-worn buildings of the old Spanish
architects of the last century, crumbling and mouldering slowly away.
In a few short years they will be numbered among the things which were,
and in their places will soon spring up smart rows of brand new brick
buildings, rejoicing in all the freshness of newly moulded clay and
coatings of bright fresh paint, looking as if age could never creep on
them and sap their foundations, loosen the mortar, rot the heavy beams
and joists, cause great chinks and cracks to open in the walls and
the roof, letting the rain and wind in to assist in the work of ruin
and decay. Even the old _Place d’Armes_ itself has a queer, ancient,
foreign look. The tall and aged sycamores, with the brown bark peeled
off in great blotches from their trunks, leaving white-bald places; the
dead and crackling branches, the dying leaves, changed by the approach
of winter, but still clinging pertinaciously to the parent stock as if
loth to fall and perish, seem to moan and mourn as the wind whistles
through them, at the desolation which has crept into that old square.
Where are its trim well-kept walks, where its neat benches, on which
many a lover has uttered his devotion to his mistress and received from
her lips his judgment? Where those gay promenaders, full of life and
hope, uttering soft nothings and prattling in foreign tongues of _la
Belle France_, or of deeds in old Spain! Where those children, rosy
cheeked and cherry lipped, lightly bounding over the smooth grass and
indulging in the pure and innocent sports of childhood, known only to
that happy state of existence? Generations have slipped away while
those old trees have been growing there--death has gathered them in by
scores, and the cemeteries still tell the time when they retired to
their quiet homes from the cares of the world forever. Bright wreaths
of gay flowers sometimes may be seen upon the final receptacles of
some of those old frequenters; evergreens growing around their graves,
wetted by the tears of those in whose breasts the memory of the
departed dwells ever. Where is the little fountain that once spouted
so gaily in the centre of the square? where those funny, finny little
denizens of the basin, in whose sportiveness the children took so
much delight? Fish or fountain exist no longer; the little dolphins
who never wagged their little tails, and who kept continually blowing
little jets of water from their mouths--the plaster naiads, who watched
over all, with a perpetual smile upon their lips, are gone also. The
basin is filled up, and the next generation can only learn that there
was once a fountain there! There is one old relic left yet--the black
old gun which has bellowed forth from its great round throat a command
to all blacks to get home as soon as possible, night after night, for
many a long year. There stands the stout and hale old fellow yet, with
iron constitution, affected but slightly by the hand of Time, and
looking like some weather-beaten old veteran of the wars, who has been
banged about a good deal, stood fire in frequent campaigns, but is
still as rough and tough as the best youngster in the service.
Then there is the old cathedral, with its old towers and turrets
frowning--all old places are by special poetical license invested
with the power of frowning--over all, flanked on each side by the
Court House and Municipal Hall, built in the olden time, and though
furbished up, and whitewashed, and painted, still bearing the date
of their origin upon them as plainly as the black looking ancient
Cathedral. Those bells, too, in what time they first tolled a knell
or rang for the quiet rest of some departed soul we cannot now tell.
For many a year they have been cracked, but still are made to perform
their office morning, noon and night, in obedience to the will of the
founder of the Cathedral. No ghosts would infest those belfries or
their neighborhood. In front stand a string of crazy old hacks and
cabs, jingling jarvies and barouches, built long and long ago; the
horses have a dejected air, and exhibit many points of a character
which would indicate that they subsisted, like chameleons, upon very
thin air, or dragged on a miserable existence in hopes of better days,
living upon the force of imagination merely. You will be told, though,
that these nags, “rum ’uns to look at though they be,” are “reg’lar
good ’uns to go.” The drivers are mostly negroes who indulge in bad
French and drink root beer at the stand of the fat old black woman at
the corner. On one side of the square we have drinking houses, _cafes_
and _restaurants_--scarce any thing else. The corner is the resort of
all the inhabitants of the region, a well kept place, where persons
can indulge in dominoes, strong _cafe_ and all sorts of drinks from
orange flower water and _eau sucre_ up to Cogniac. Every afternoon
it is thronged, and a babel like confusion prevails from the mixture
of languages, French, Spanish, German, Italian and English. In the
same row of buildings is the well known _Cafe de Quatre Saisons_,
and Victor’s _restaurant_, one of the crack places of resort in the
city, where _bon vivants_ and _epicures_ have a decided propensity
to congregate. On the opposite side is the queerest combination of
trades. Here is a depot of the fruits of Pomona, with stacks of
apples, piles of oranges, strings of bananas, baskets of pecans,
walnuts and shell-barks; little monuments of guava jelly and pyramids
of cocoa nuts, piled up like cannon balls. Presiding over all is a
stout, olive colored Spaniard, in a striped guernsey shirt and fur
cap--he is the deputy of the goddess, handles her luscious offerings
and pockets the proceeds. Side by side with this is a hardware store,
with long-legged spiders, and griddles, and sprawling gridirons;
podgy, apopleptic looking iron pots and wide-mouthed copper kettles;
casks of spike, coils of wire, shelves of knives and forks; packages
of locks and bolts and bars and hooks, mute commentators upon the
dishonesty of mankind. Then comes another fruit depot, another and
another, all looking exactly alike, arranged the same and all attended
by individuals of the same pattern. Hardware, perishable fruits and
spirits are the commodities exclusively dealt in in this row. How the
second story is occupied no one can say. The balcony railings are
usually hung with damp and dingy looking clothes, sheets, towels,
stockings, gowns, pants, and vests. Broken flower pots with starvling
rose bushes and blighted geraniums, dragging out a miserable existence,
may occasionally be seen, and pale, attenuated females with uncombed
hair and drabbled dresses, deluging them with soap suds. An old man
sometimes smokes his short clay pipe moodily, silent and alone, leaning
over the balcony and listlessly watching the passers-by; and now and
then a child will clamber upon the railings and terrify the beholder by
demonstrations of descending head foremost to the pavement below. The
inhabitants by day are few, but at night the place swarms--it is alive.
Fiddles, flutes, tamborines, grinding organs are going it at a great
rate; busy feet are toeing and heeling it, but whereaway it is hard
to tell. The sounds issue through the chinks of the window shutters,
creep out beneath the doors, curl out of the chimney tops with the
smoke; a strange jumble of queer sounds, half expressed notes, abridged
cachinations, bits of German glees, replete with consonants melodiously
uttered, pervades the atmosphere with the indistinctness of a dream,
till the Cathedral clock sonorously peals forth the hour of 12. Then
the noise which has been gradually growing less and less distinct,
suddenly subsides entirely--the lights fade away and the quiet of the
night is disturbed no more.